Announcing BABLR

Summary

Welcome! I'm Conrad, a Frontend Engineer by trade, and for the past five years I've been writing open source Javascript code. I've developed and am today releasing the latest version of a new generalized parser framework, BABLR, and with it a whole new API-based platform for software development.My goal with this project is to explore what would happen if the IDE was not a text file editor first, but rather a code document editor. If we were willing to shed some of the baggage of history, what might we gain in return?Already developers are using document-driven coding tools daily: formatters to handle indentation, linters to catch common mistakes, transpilers to desugar new language, and codemods to perform refactors that touch anywhere from tens of files to hundreds of thousands and more.Today we are shipping the core technologies of that platform: our parser framework, BABLR to compete with Tree-sitter; a parse tree format called agAST to compete with ESTree; and a new data language designed for parse trees called CSTML.Each of these technologies can stand alone, but together the represent a thoroughly-integrated platform that is more than the sum of its parts. BABLR parsers provide the means to create CSTML and agAST trees, while libraries of data strucures and algorithms make the novel tree formats useful in practice. Whether the platform achieves impressive growth over the long term will depend mostly on how good a compromise I've brokered between language authors, tool authors, and users, because ultimately each of these three groups of people will see value in the platform if it is a place where they can come to meet the other two groups.To tell the story of the product then is to tell the story of why each of these three core constituencies would see value in it.BABLR for DevsWe see several ways to get developers to fall in love with our platform. We've made it browser-native and incredibly lightweight, so that our code analysis can run in any docs site or b...